In an Order to Love
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: Flay went on a little journey after Kira was labelled MIA...and while it would take words beyond comprehension to chronicle it in its entirety, let's try the shorter version in fifty sentences.


**A/N:** This is written for the 1sentence challenge on livejournal for the pairing Flay/Kira, for the theme set epsilon. It's also my first time doing one of these one sentence per prompt challenge, but I figured I'd give it a try.

Now, back to that Death Note fic I was supposed to be working on.

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**In an Order to Love**

**#01 Motion:** The world was in a tremulant motion around her, but all Flay could see was the white cloth that was her haven and all she could hear was her own harsh panting – and the fleeting cry of Miriallia as she passed, repeating the name "Tolle" in a quiet fever…and once, "Kira".

**#02 Cool: **Sweat clung to her skin as she finally wormed her way out of her sanctuary, but instead of feeling cool, the filtered air made her shiver – and the sudden silence that followed the dusk of battle was even colder.

**#03 Young:** Kuzzey was the first person she found and she immediately demanded information from the clumsy and reluctant young officer, but when he turned to her she thought suddenly that he had aged years since she had last seen him on the bridge.

**#04 Last:** Kuzzey left, but she payed him no heed because it was the words that were important, and shell-shocking: Kira was dead.

**#05 Wrong:** She denied it for as long as she could, but she combed the Archangel without being able to find Kira and she had to admit, finally, that she had done exactly what she had first wished…and she cried for it, slumped over a now empty bunk, because maybe, just maybe, her own plan for revenge had backfired on her and she had fallen in love.

**#06 Gentle:** Sai was no longer the sweet and gentle boy who went along with whatever she said; he had grown up, and his eyes were clearer than hers and his tongue looser and he told her exactly what she hadn't wanted, until then, to admit to herself.

**#07 One:** She had never believed in a one true love, because her engagement to Sai was purely their parents doing and her relationship with Kira was for her own agenda, but that day she realised she had undervalued and therefore lost something she would never be able to replace again, and she wished she had just one last time wherein she could see him and apologise.

**#08 Thousand:** It didn't matter how often she wished though, because Kira had died defending them all and now there was nothing left for her to do except regret.

**#09 King:** She had called him foolish – and many other things more hateful than that – and treated him like a child, stroking her hair as he cried into her lap, whispering nonsense into his years…but in the end, he was a far better man than she.

**#10 Learn:** It was a lonely last leg of their journey and she spent it thinking about how little she knew about war when she had enlisted…because she had known that Kira would one day die in battle, but never like this.

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**#11 Blur:** The transfer happened so fast she barely had time to pack before she was dragged off the Archangel by Natarle Badgiruel, and just like that she was tossed into the unknown with only the stern executive officer and the Hawk of Endymion by her side…before the former headed towards a different destination and the latter abandoned his place in the line.

**#12 Wait:** She called to Mu La Flaga to wait, suddenly terrified of being in that lifepod without a single familiar face, but he didn't acknowledge her cry in the least and so she waited a little as he had said; when he didn't return however, she abandoned her place as well, since there was absolutely nothing that should keep her there.

**#13 Change:** Despite being aboard the Archangel, a warship, and witnessing her father's ship blown to bits, the first time she saw a dead body was when the masked man shot a fellow Earth Alliance officer in front of her hiding place.

**#14 Command:** She knew how to use a gun, and she didn't need a command to tell her to shoot at an obvious ZAFT member, but suddenly he spoke in her father's voice and she was confused.

**#15 Hold:** Rau Le Creuset knocked her out, carrying her to his vessel and into his plans, and when she awoke his grip was tight on her and she could not escape a hated Coordinator.

**#16 Need:** More and more, he reminded her of Kira in his kindness; he did not need to keep her safe and treat her kindly, nor did he need a secretary, but she was there, occupied and in perfectly good health.

**#17: Vision:** She was finally forced to change her view of Coordinators when spending every breath with them; before that, Kira had simply been the one who only sometimes was exempted from the flock, but slowly she began to realise they were, ultimately, the same as Naturals despite the altering of their genes.

**#18 Attention:** Many soldiers were displeased by her presence and others still by the reasons behind it, but while she remained in the quarters of Commander Rau Le Creuset, she was safe from their frustration and their ill-intention.

**#19 Soul:** She had thought Coordinators were soulless creatures, but if that was the case why did Rau Le Creuset go out of his way to say words of comfort to her, a mere prisoner on board his vessel…except she wasn't sure she was just a prisoner, because he certainly didn't treat her like that.

**#20 Picture:** She had a lot of time along with little but the tablet for company, and sometimes she tried to draw on it, but she found she could not draw anyone like how they appeared in her memories; it was as though they had slipped away behind a curtain of fog.

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**#21 Fool:** She cried many times for her loss, but it was far too late.

**#22 Mad:** The man was mad, even if it was a madness only she could see, but while once she would have scorned him she couldn't help but feel a little sympathy for Rau Le Creuset and a little understanding towards his trek towards an end to the war.

**#23 Child:** Sometimes she felt like a child away from her parents, but despite that she kept the Archangel as close to her heart as she could, and it came a little closer each day.

**#24 Now:** She sometimes tended to her captor in his bouts of illness – a task he entrusted to no-one else – and while he had balked from the task initially she found he was in just as much need of comfort as anyone, and once again he reminded her of Kira.

**#25 Shadow:** He, Rau Le Creuset, told her about a key that could end the war, and she knew in her heart that the Archangel was the keeper he needed, for anyone else will simply bring upon the destruction of an entire race, and that was wrong.

**#26 Goodbye:** Time and time again, she turned over her last meeting with Kira in her head, and all she understood was the boy was just too kind for his own good and she hadn't even returned it with a simple "come back safe"…or, with what the future had granted him, a "goodbye".

**#27 Hide:** Her guilt was impossible to reconcile, and so she buried it, instead trying to understand this new man before her, and others she sometimes worked with, so she would not make the same mistake again.

**#28 Fortune:** Once, fortune had read her an angel, and she had thought it in the shallowest sense, but as she learnt first aid from the infirmary and assisted the war casualties, she found, and was told, she was an angel of another sense as she, for the first time she could consciously remember, helped people unselfishly.

**#29 Safe:** The ship, like the Archangel, shook often in the seas of war, but she was always either in the infirmary or in the office of Rau Le Creuset, and always safe.

**#30 Ghost:** He still reminded her of her father and Kira, dredging up bits of her past and her regrets even after she had buried them, but she got to know more about him than the ghosts he carried and slowly found the scared child inside in a man's body.

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**#31 Book:** She had a lot of time to think of her past and her regrets, and she could fill a book with the things she would have changed if given the chance.

**#32 Eye:** Her eyes had changed, she reflected, staring at her image in the mirror; they were no longer the eyes of a child, but an adult.

**#33 Never:** She was still afraid of Rau Le Creuset, not only because of what he was but because he was, beyond the surface, so much like Kira and yet she did not, could not, feel the same for him.

**#34 Sing:** Lacus' recorded voice echoed in the room, and she remembered another Coordinator she had shunned so long ago.

**#35 Sudden:** Sometimes, when she saw the crew mingle and herself far apart, she was hit by a sudden wave of nostalgia for despite how she acted, the crew of the Archangel still kept her in the fold.

**#36 Stop:** She had long since ceased wishing for time to stop, for she knew now that nothing once gone could be returned and she simply had to make good on what she had left.

**#37 Time:** The clock ticked away when she was without company, echoing in the silent office, but when Rau Le Creuset was around, his feverish swallowing of pills seemed to speed time up.

**#38 Wash:** She had first cringed away from the bloodied bandages and almost thrown up, but gradually she became used to the sight and the smell of them, and as supplied were limited in space, she spent a good portion of "infirmary duty" time washing them.

**#39 Torn:** It seemed so strange that she had managed to fit into an office she had been dragged to, but the wounds from being torn away from the Archangel still existed…as well as the raw truth that she did not belong on this ZAFT vessel.

**#40 History:** Kira smacked her in the face in a way she had never anticipated; staring at the photo of the little brown-haired baby, she, beyond her own feelings, wondered what Rau Le Creuset's connection with him was.

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**#41 Power:** She now held the power that could end the war, but she was trapped, floating in an escape pod in the middle of a battle.

**#42 Bother:** She still didn't understand Rau Le Creuset's intentions, but she saw the Archangel and prayed that they, even without Kira or Lieutenant Badgiruel, she would be able to return to them because she might have been a bother to them, but that was the nest she had made her home without realising before she was gone.

**#43 God:** She gasped aloud at the Gundam that passed her by; for a moment she had seen Kira's face, and she knew then that he was alive.

**#44 Wall:** She had tried to reach them: Kira and the Archangel, but the battle had made it impossible and she had wound up in the hands of Blue Cosmos instead, but she was thankful at the very least for the newly promoted Captain Badgiruel, because there was one kind and familiar face and one person she could trust.

**#45 Naked:** Commander Azrael stared at her, and it made her even more conscious of the ZAFT military outfit she wore upon an Earth Alliance vessel, but Natarle gently pushed her towards her new station after checking one last time that she was willing to sit on the bridge in a war if it meant that one less person would die now, because every life was valuable and that was a lesson she had learnt the heard way.

**#46 Drive:** She had had enough of sitting around and doing nothing; they didn't need her in the infirmary so she would instead assist the only other way she could, with the CIC.

**#47 Harm:** Azrael was the leader of Blue Cosmos, and his ruthlessness horrified her, but Natarle had ordered all hands to abandon ship and their ship was once again in sight of the new Gundam Kira rode, and amidst all the beams that threatened to destroy them was their angel.

**#48 Precious:** For a moment, it seemed their eyes met – Flay and Kira's – but even with both of them trying their best to reach each other, it was never to be; the precious words they had both carried for so long remained ultimately unsaid.

**#49 Hunger:** She cried his name when she saw the beam, but the vessel was aflame within seconds and it greedily ate at her body, giving her no time to scream or even feel pain before it consumed her entirely – and the last thing she saw was Kira, crying and reaching out to her, and she gave him a small but honest smile.

**#50 Believe:** She hoped her heart had reached him, even beyond death and whoever was lucky enough to have that special place in his heart, because she had her chance and wasted it but she had learnt the hard way that she had loved him.


End file.
